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Verizon sells its New England phone service

Verizon will transfer its telephone businesss in Maine, New Hampshire, and …

1.5 million New England residents are getting a new local phone company after incumbent Verizon agreed to sell its assets in three states to FairPoint Communications. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are being spun out of the Verizon embrace and into the arms of North Carolina-based FairPort, but the change shouldn't be noticeable—at first.

That's because FairPoint is keeping on Verizon's workforce. 3,000 Verizon employees will transfer their jobs to the new company, which then plans to add 600 more positions in the area.

But FairPoint does plan to make some changes. While Verizon is focused on rolling out fiber in more densely-populated areas, FairPoint has been focusing on rural and "small urban" regions since 1991. The company plans to "significantly increase broadband availability" in the three states once it takes over (the deal could take up to a year to go through).

That's good news for consumers, but it's also good for Verizon, which gets to offload $1.7 billion worth of debt from its books. Verizon's been ringing up quite a bit of debt lately—by the company's own estimate, its FiOS fiber optic project will cost $18 billion when complete, although Joseph Ambeault, Verizon's director of interactive applications, told Ars at last week's CES that his company has seen significant support cost savings from its new infrastructure.

$18 billion is a big expense even for one of the nation's largest companies, and Verizon has been taking heat from skeptics who argue that a more gradual rollout (like AT&T's fiber-to-the-node system) might make more sense until there is greater consumer demand for massive bandwidth.

Verizon wants to prove them wrong, and the company appears to be refocusing its efforts on rolling out FiOS in more populated regions and shedding subscribers who don't fit into that strategy as well. FairPoint's own focus on rural areas seems to make the company a good match for the deal, and their pledge to increase DSL availability sharply over the next year is refreshing. Is this the rare deal that's a win for everyone involved—including consumers?